Cordillera Huayhuash Water Quality 2010-2011

The Cordillera Huayhuash is the second highest mountain range in the Peruvian Andes and is important for tourism, mining, and local livelihoods. These three economic activities all share an interest in the water quality of the over 50 lakes and associated drainages that exist in the region. Water quality monitoring can help ease tensions between interests from these distinct economic sectors. This dataset reports on two rounds of water quality sampling and testing performed at 56 identified monitoring stations in 2010 and 2011. Several additional spot samples were taken in both years. At each monitoring station field measures such as temperature, pH, and conductivity were taken and samples were collected for laboratory analysis of elemental concentrations (metals and others) and field analysis of biological contamination (enterococcus). The results show contamination from mining activities, from tourism activities and from natural sources. The data is in a comma separated value (CSV) format with two flat files: "Pruebas.csv" contains the measurements of all parameters for each sample; "Estaciones.csv" contains a list of monitoring stations with geographic coordinates; "README.csv" contains the data dictionaries and other metadata (description) for both of the flat files.